FONT

SHARE THIS

MORE STORIES

Tide can't tame Tigers

Glencoe girls challenge league-leading Tigard but suffer a 38-23 loss

In a battle of No. 1 versus No. 2 in the Pacific Conference, the Tigard girls basketball team proved it is not ready to yield the crown yet.

Glencoe drew a tough task Tuesday night in trying to knock off a Tigers team that had relatively little trouble running the table in the first half of conference play. And while the Crimson Tide hung tough defensively and held the visitors well below their season scoring average of 52-plus points per game, they could not conjure up enough offense of their own in a 38-23 defeat.

Had the Tide pulled the upset, they would have clawed into a tie with first-place Tigard (13-5, 8-0), winner of its ninth game in a row. Instead, Glencoe (11-7, 6-2) fell back into a second-place tie with Tualatin, a team it had beaten in a similarly defensive-oriented 29-21 victory last Friday.

I thought we executed very poorly, actually, on the offensive end, he said. We worked on some stuff, and we know what Tigards about. They came in and just set the tone with their intensity and didnt look back from there.

In fact, if not for that first-quarter lag, the ending to this one might have turned out differently. After Kayla Hyppolite traded baskets with Tigards Elise Conroy to start the contest, it appeared both teams were ready to play.

But the first quarter was almost all trouble from there, as the Tide had difficulty matching the intensity of the Tigers, who went on an 11-0 run over the next three-plus minutes.

In the end, that wound up being much of the difference in the game, as Glencoe made a couple runs at the champs but never could quite close the gap.

Defensively, I think we kind of took a little too long to get the engine going and dug ourselves a little bit of a hole there, Hettrich noted. We cant do that against a team like Tigard. Thats like their MO. They jump ahead by 10, 12 points, and then they just kind of keep it there the rest of the game.

The Tide warmed to their task over much of the rest of the game until the end, when the Tigers knocked down some free throws to account for the final margin. Mostly though, the Tide played them pretty evenly, and even looked like they might be up for making a run.

Glencoe took a 22-10 deficit into the second half, but Eliette Clausen provided an early third-quarter spark. First she finished down low and then got out in the open court, converting a bucket off of a Courtney Clayton pass to cut the margin to 22-14.

I thought the times that we ran the floor, we really forced them to get back, Hettrich said. Thats probably where we found our most success, was trying to getting out and run the floor a little bit.

I thought we had a few more chances to look ahead, but ... their guards do such a job pressuring, you just immediately want to put the ball down and protect it so your eyes go down.

After the Clausen scores, Tigard went back to work again, building up to 30-15 when a cutting Lexi Carter finished at the hoop to open the quarter.

Again, the Tide did not fold. A couple minutes in, Lillie Hamel scored in the lane, and then Abby Anderson broke a scoring drought for both teams midway through the quarter to get the home team back within single digits at 32-23.

But Tigard shut out Glencoe from there, closing the contest on a 6-0 run, all on free throws.

The Tigers Kaylie Boschma led all scorers with 10 points, and Carter added nine. Led by five points from Anderson, Glencoe got its scores by committee, as Hyppolite, Jessica Lantz and Clausen added four apiece.

The Tide are back home tonight to host Forest Grove in the first half of a Pack the Place doubleheader. The girls game tips off at 5:45 p.m., followed by the boys contest at 7:15. A raffle for a barbecue smoker and a big screen television will take place during the evening.